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In Reply to: Embedding malware attacks in multimedia files posted by Albert B. Broman on November 29, 2006 at 21:45:08:
Most traditional multimedia files cannot hurt you. They are static data, not executable code. For example a sound .wav file- this may be corrupt and it may not play, but that's the worst it can do.It is important to show file extensions in Windows. If a file has extension .wav or .avi or some normal file extension, then you can double click on it safely- the worst that can happen is it won't run. But if you don't have your extensions on and double click on a file that is masquerading as a video file, and it turns out to be an .exe, then it can damage you in terrible ways. The safest of all is not to double click on any file, just open it within a player.
Now there are newer types of media files that are not strictly static data. I associate these mainly with Digital Rights Management, and I have read about trojans that exploit some bugs in Microsoft DRM. I just stay away from DRM files in general.
Follow Ups:
Hi,Then streamed media such as internet radio or shoutcast TV can't do harm? The referenced article in the original post would lead me to believe that such media could contain malicious code.
In general, I was responding to the issue of downloaded multimedia files. Now, streaming media is something different. There is some sort of interaction between the media and the player. In many cases, this interaction is used to prevent the media being stored as a playable file. So, depending on the actual coding of the player, it is remotely possible that a stream might be generated that would exploit a vulnerability in the player and thus run malicious code. I don't actually know if this has happened or not...but I would certainly think Internet radio and shoutcast would be quite safe. I stream Internet radio all the time and have never had any problems, FWIW.
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